A mobile phone app that encourages parents to play games at home with their children shows promise in closing the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils, according to a new study, although concerns have been raised over the small number of parents included in the research. A randomised control trial of 144 families evaluated by researchers at the…

Free school meals students across every region of England are less likely to access apprenticeship schemes than their wealthier peers, research from Teach First has found. The education charity is calling for apprenticeships to be made more inclusive, after finding that young people from sufficiently low income backgrounds to qualify for free schools meals are…

Allowing free schools to open where there is a “social need” would increase community integration and help prevent racist abuse in classrooms, a free school campaign group has claimed. The New Schools Network (NSN) has today released an analysis of exclusion data that reveals 20 children are excluded from school each day for racist abuse, arguing that…

Grammar schools and free schools may be exacerbating social segregation, new research released today shows. Analysis of the deprivation levels at primary and secondary schools in England compared with deprivation in their local area, by education data company School Dash, has found that poorer pupils are hugely underrepresented at particular types of schools. School Dash…

New free schools will be allowed to open if their proposers can demonstrate a “social need” or “significant demand” from parents under new changes announced by the government which have sparked fears of a “free-for-all”. The Department for Education has released updated guidance on the application criteria for bids from sponsors, marking a significant departure…

Ofsted’s annual report for 2014/15 highlighted an educational gap, not only between primary and secondary, but also between the north and south of England. Duncan Sim offers some concrete proposals to address the discrepancies in both funding and attainment. The north-south divide starts young. This is, at any rate, what the statistics about the relative performance of secondary…

The grammar school debate is firmly back on the agenda thanks to a burgeoning campaign by Conservative MPs to lift the ban on new selective schools. But bringing back selection is no substitute for the one silver bullet in education: good teaching, argues Russell Hobby. Grammar schools have returned to our political debate, and I am…

More than 37 headteachers and representatives of professional associations have signed an open letter to Justine Greening calling for a renewed commitment to the teaching of PSHE, Citizenship and Religion in post-Brexit Britain. The letter to the Secretary of State for Education, dated Wednesday 27th July, points out that values education such as PSHE, Citizenship and Religion…

The curriculum reforms of the current government are based on the idea that academic qualifications are a prerequisite for success. Ed Cadwallader argues that this places middle-class students at an advantage, proposing curriculum diversification to help fix the class divide. Whether or not you agree that the vote to leave the European Union was a…

A committee of MPs and peers has called for an independent review of the Prevent duty after witnesses warned some teachers were “over-enthusiastic” with the duty and young Muslims felt they were being targeted by schools because of their faith. The joint committee on human rights has demanded a review of Prevent, which became a legal…

Government funding to help train teachers how to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying has been trebled to nearly £3 million. Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, originally announced in March that only £1 million was available to spend on HBT projects over the next three years, half of what was spent in 2014.…